Merging MS Money files

Back when my wife and I got engaged, I setup a new MS Money file to track all her financial accounts, just like I do with mine. I wanted to get everything of hers in one place and build up so history so that we could merge our MS Money files together when it was time.

Well its time. We got married this month and we have been slowly merging our finances over the last six months. My fiancee and I opened a joint savings account, I added her as a cardholder on my credit card, and I have begun to pay some of her bills out of my accounts.

More psychological than anything, I decided it was time to merge our MS Money files so we had all of our assets and liabilities on 1 balance sheet as I am planning on presenting a single net worth status for October.

One night when I was wide awake and still adjusting to the time change, I bit the bullet and tried to merge the MS Money files. However, merging 2 MS Money files is not a straight forward event. To merge the files you basically need to export each account from one files (one by one), then import those accounts (one by one) into your other existing MS Money file. Worse however was trying to merge my wife's mortgage. MS Money wouldn't let me export the mortgage and import it. After a few hours of trying I gave up and completely resetup the mortgage in my existing MS money file.

In the end I would say it wasn't worth the hassle except for straight forward accounts with alot of history you want to preserve. If you are looking to merge MS money files, I would selectively export those easy accounts (like checking, savings, and credit cards) and then setup investments, mortgages, etc from scratch.

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